"The Counselor" is ultimately disappointing, given its star-heavy cast and much-heralded director and screenwriter, Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy.
This is not a twisty whodunit so much as a dreary who's-gonna-suffer-for-it.
Slow to unwind, and full of ponderous speeches that aim to explain too much, "The Counselor" might have been better if the filmmakers had exerted more discipline and trimmed back the talkiness of the script and some of its nastier bits of business. This is not a film for the squeamish or those impatient with gringo stereotypes of a hyper-violent Mexico.
Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt deliver as three of the mostly unlikeable characters in the film who take a big risk with devastating consequences. If McCarthy's Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men" aimed to portray the changing nature of man and the evil he is willing to do, "The Counselor" accepts that its characters inhabit a debased world. It's not the smart who will survive, but those without sentiment or weakness.
Cameron Diaz does not fare as well. She carries an air of mystery in the film's first half and is its most intriguing character for a time. But as Malkina's motives become clear, the actress best known for her comedic portrayals lacks the depth to carry the plot home.
There's also an odd insertion of the well-known Ciudad Juarez mystery - hundreds of murdered and missing women in the area just south of the Texas border. If the message is that these women are victims of the stupidity and greed of the men in their lives, perhaps the story would have been better told from Malkina's point of view, along with Laura, the character played by Penelope Cruz, wasted in a mostly throwaway role.